This 45-minute theatrical multimedia piece retells the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice through live performance, text, poetry, chant, movement, video, and electronic sound. In this fresh re-creation of an ancient story, the musicians of Pictures on Silence become the characters they portray, and as actor-performers lead the audience through their play of love, death, and danger. Orpheus, the fabled male poet with a lyre whose music could tame savage beasts, here becomes a female - and immobile - musician, her instrument the harp. Eurydice, the poet's beloved female innocent, becomes Yuri, a young male student lost in a sudden tragedy, his instrument the soprano saxophone.
In the ancient myth, Orpheus travels to the underworld, carrying his lyre, to recover his lost Eurydice. The power of his music wins him the chance to bring Eurydice back to earth on one condition: he must not look back at her as they journey back to the light. In this modern version, Orpheus, unable to move because she is symbolically 'tied' to the harp, is totally separated from Yuri: she cannot follow him to the kingdom of shadows.
New video, still images, and texts together narrate the story from a bright beginning, through the central catastrophe, to a transformative end.
Created for Pictures on Silence, the dynamic new Baltimore/Washington D.C. based harp and saxophone duo of Jacqueline Pollauf and Noah Getz, Orpheus and the Secret Road explores the distance between life and death, ancient and modern, hope and despair.
Summer-Night Songs (1994, rev. 1997)
by Andrew Earle Simpson
Simpson's interest in composing for the combination of harp and saxophone dates back to the 1990's. Click below to hear his earlier work, Summer-Night Songs. Sound samples from Orpheus and the Secret Road will be added soon.
Orpheus and the Secret Road will be premiered:
February 1, 2013
Atlas Performing Arts Center,
1333 H Street, NE,
Washington, DC 20002
Click here to download a promotional poster for Orpheus and the Secret Road.
Andrew Earle Simpson, composer, pianist, and organist, is ordinary professor and chair of the division of Theory and Composition at the Benjamin T. Rome School of Music of The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. A composer of opera, film, orchestral, chamber, choral, dance , and vocal music, his most recent projects reflect an interest in cross-disciplinary music, silent film, and theatrical music. He has received awards and grants from the American Music Center, American Composers Forum, The Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, The Loeb Classical Library Foundation, the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, and the Maryland State Arts Council, among many others.
Simpson's music has been performed across the United States and abroad by such ensembles as the Cedar Rapids Symphony Chamber
Players, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Contemporary Music Forum, counter)induction, Tampa Bay Composers Forum, Great Noise Ensemble, Pictures on Silence,
Red Cedar Trio,
Boland-Dowdall duo, Lyralos Ensemble (Greece), Catholic University Opera Theater, Cantate Chamber Singers, Reston Chorale, numerous other
professional and university ensembles, and by such conductors and performers as Theodore Antoniou, Tim Hankewich, Marvin Hamlisch, Brian Ganz,
Michael Cameron, Nancy Ambrose King, Noah Getz, and Tim McAllister.
An active silent film composer, pianist, and organist, Simpson is House Film Accompanist at the Library of Congress' Mt. Pony Theater, and Resident Film Accompanist at the National Gallery of Art. He has also performed at the Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone, Italy, the New York Public Library, AFI Silver Theater, Slapsticon, and other venues. Recent performances include the Capital Fringe Festival and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC and a concert of his film music with musicians from the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra at the Sala Cecelia Meireles in Rio de Janeiro (2009).
Simpson is also co-founder of the Snark Ensemble, an instrumental group devoted to creating and performing new scores to silent film. The ensemble created and recorded new film scores for a DVD box set, "Harry Langdon: Lost and Found" (2007), and "Becoming Charley Chase" (2009), both released by All Day Entertainment. Simpson's piano scores also appear on All Day's "American Slapstick, Volume 2" (2008).
At Catholic University, Simpson created the Master of Music in Composition, Stage Music Emphasis program, which opened in August 2005. This innovative graduate program, unique in its scope, combines practical training in collaborative and theatrical composition with professional academic coursework.
Andrew Earle Simpson's instrumental chamber music is recorded on the Capstone, Athena, and Arizona University Recordings labels. In April 2009, the Red Cedar Trio released Fireflies, a CD devoted entirely to Simpson's music, on the Fleur de Son Classics label.
Photograph by John Armato, copyright 2010